Just Once by Jill Marie Landis

adrift with biscuits and bacon and sacks of supplies on a flimsy log raft.
    “What if you drown?” she mumbled, thinking aloud. “What’ll happen to me?”
    Hunter cleared his throat. “Well, I imagine a resourceful girl like yourself would manage somehow. Maybe you should have taken Many Feathers up on his offer.”
    “That’s very insensitive of you, Hunter,” she said, her temper rising.
    “I don’t intend to drown.”
    “No one
intends
to die, but accidents happen.”
    “I’ve done this before. Don’t worry about me.” He dismounted and led his pony over to a clearing, where he pulled out the hobbles and let the animal graze.
    “I’m not worried about you,” she lied. “I’m worried about me.”
    Jemma followed him and began taking supplies off her. sturdy little mount. She had grown fond of the spotted pony, often coddling it when they stopped for the day and offering wild apples when she found them.
    Hunter paused with a pack on his shoulder. “Don’t fret, Jemma. Everything will be fine. You set up camp and gather some wood while I start cutting timber for the raft. I’d like to have it built before midday tomorrow.”
    Jemma watched him go, encouraged by his lack of concern as well as his confidence in her ability to organize the camp. While he combed the banks and began to chop down a tree, she walked along the river’s edge until she found an abandoned campsite. She tried to imagine who might have been there before them: rivermen going north, settlers moving into Mississippi and Tennessee from the southeast, Indians who had used these trails for generations. Jemma gathered firewood and started a fire in the stone fire ring beside the river, the way Hunter had taught her.
    He was out of sight, but she could hear the dull, hollow throb of his axe against stubborn wood somewhere nearby. She didn’t know how he could keep up the pace with such vigor. She was near exhaustion. Rather than wait for him to come back to camp and cook, she decided to start the evening meal. She had seen him cook enough bacon to give it another try.
    The sun had slipped behind the trees and the long green shadows of the forest had merged and blended to become darkness when she heard Hunter trudging tiredly back into camp.
    “I hope you’re hungry,” she said without glancing up, proud enough to burst as she began laying strips of crisp, unburned bacon on a dented pie tin. She rummaged around in the bundle of dry goods, came up with the biscuit tin, and piled some soda crackers on his plate.
    Jemma held up the offering, finally looking at Hunter. He was half-naked, stripped to the waist. His leather shirt was hooked in two fingers, slung over his back. His shoulder-length blond hair, still tied in a queue, was wet. It curled riotously, with tendrils any woman would envy teasing his brow and temples. His lashes were spiked with water droplets, as was his broad, suntanned chest.
    The minute she laid eyes on Hunter Boone’s muscular chest, Jemma realized in a blinding flash of insight that everything Sister Augusta Aleria had ever warned about temptations of the flesh and the curse of nakedness was absolutely true.
    Speechless for one of the few times in her life, she could do nothing but stare. Forgotten, the plate in her hand began to droop. The bacon slid perilously close to the edge before Hunter lunged and retrieved it.
    “What’s this?” he said, half-smiling, as he looked at the bacon.
    With her senses still in a stupor, Jemma tried to put a coherent thought together. All that came out was, “Bacon.”
    “Ah. I thought the only bacon you made was black.”
    “I’m … getting better at it. How … did you get all wet? Did you fall in?”
    “I jumped in. I worked up a sweat chopping logs. We’re in luck, though. A little farther upstream, I found an area that must have been hit by a powerful storm. The trees have been felled by the wind and scattered like twigs. Tomorrow morning it won’t take long to